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Sunday, August 30, 2009

Eric Holder and Barack Obama Invade Russia.

"Time and patience. Patience and time. The Grand Army is wounded, but is it mortally wounded? An apple should not be plucked while it's green. Patience and time." -- Marshal Kutuzov, War and Peace, 1956.

About five weeks ago, faced with a crucial decision on how to react to brutal CIA interrogation practices, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. concluded that it would be all but impossible to follow President Obama's mandate to move forward, rather than investigate divisive episodes from the Bush "war on terror."

Holder notified the White House that he was reluctantly leaning toward naming a prosecutor to review whether laws had been broken during interrogations -- the very thing Obama had said he wanted to avoid. And the word Holder got back, according to people familiar with the conversations, was that the decision was up to him.

The back story to Monday's appointment of a career prosecutor to review CIA interrogation methods illustrates Holder's influence in the new administration and sheds light on the emerging and delicate relationship between the White House and the Justice Department. In this and other big battles, including the decision to release memos this year by Bush administration officials giving the green light to harsh interrogation tactics, Holder and his Justice Department have prevailed over strong objections from the CIA and the intelligence community. Holder hasn't won every one of those battles, but he has won many.

In this case, on a matter of civil liberties and national security, the victory signals a dynamic that could play out on a range of sensitive issues that will come to define the Obama administration and its differences from the Bush era, including the detention of terrorism suspects and the protection of state secrets.

Administrations dating at least to Richard M. Nixon's have grappled with the balance between political sensitivities in the White House and the independence of the attorney general, the nation's top law enforcement officer. During the Bush administration, the relationship was marked for years by charges of politicization.

This week, after Holder announced his decision to examine about 10 cases of alleged detainee abuse by CIA interrogators in overseas prisons, the White House said it was his prerogative. But the official accounts did not mention Holder's conversations with the White House, nor Obama's deep, if cautious, engagement with the issues.

"There are some things he recognizes are the attorney general's prerogative to do, but at the same time, it's not like he just says, 'Well, whatever he does, he'll do,' " a senior administration official said of the president. "He wants to make sure we take into account those decisions and take the appropriate steps within the White House to deal with them, particularly from the standpoint of making sure we maintain that very capable, robust counterterrorism capability."

Holder is still carving out his role in history, finding his comfort zone between such predecessors as Alberto R. Gonzales, widely considered to be too close to the Bush White House, and Janet Reno, who sometimes alienated President Bill Clinton and the FBI with her stubborn independence and her investigations of Cabinet members.

Holder's aides would not describe his thought process in the weeks leading to the announcement. But Holder himself acknowledged the seriousness of the move and its possible fallout this week, saying that he shared the president's conviction that backward-looking inquiries could fracture the country.

"As attorney general, my duty is to examine the facts and to follow the law," Holder said. "In this case, given all of the information currently available, it is clear to me that this review is the only responsible course of action for me to take."

For his part, Obama appears determined to enter relationships with his Cabinet members as a strategic participant. People who brief him say he is able to game out scenarios before the experts in the room, even on foreign policy, national security and other issues in which he had relatively little expertise before running for president.

Obama is approaching the issues as a game of "three-dimensional chess," said John O. Brennan, an assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. "It's not kinetic checkers. And I think the approach in the past was kinetic checkers. There are moves that are made on the chess board that really have implications, so the president is always looking at those dimensions of it."

The just-announced review by career prosecutor John H. Durham is being closely followed by the intelligence community for clues about whether it will remain fixed on the low-level CIA employees and contractors who may have stepped out of legal bounds. Once Durham starts digging, some analysts said, the veteran prosecutor could uncover evidence that leads him higher up the chain of command in an inquiry that grows broader than the what the Justice Department outlined Monday.

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney excoriated Obama and Holder this week, saying they were weakening protections for Americans.

"President Obama's decision to allow the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute CIA personnel, and his decision to remove authority for interrogation from the CIA to the White House, serves as a reminder, if any were needed, of why so many Americans have doubts about this administration's ability to be responsible for our nation's security," Cheney said.

When he took over as attorney general after the resignation of Gonzales in late 2007, Michael B. Mukasey promptly reinstated guidelines that would bar the Bush White House and others in the executive branch from reaching out to most of the department's prosecutors. "The Department will advise the White House . . . only where it is important for the performance of the President's duties and where appropriate from a law enforcement perspective," Mukasey wrote.

Obama's advisers said he was not oblivious to the effect a criminal investigation into prisoner abuse cases would have, both on the intelligence officials it touches and on the overall political climate. He has talked privately about the effect the inquiry would have on the CIA, but he has drawn a clear line between the White House and the Justice Department on criminal investigations into detainee abuse, according to allies who repeatedly described his approach in a single phrase: "balancing act."

"The president is a very sophisticated thinker and understands the implications of these decisions and events, and wants to make sure that he is aware of what those repercussions might be on the workforce, and on the reputation and image of the United States," Brennan said in an interview.

"I think he is determined to make sure we are on the right course going ahead, but you cannot just ignore the past, especially when Congress is doing its inquiries and reviews and we're going to be facing these issues as a result of court cases, as a result of congressional actions," Brennan said. "I think he is making sure that he makes the best decisions, and sometimes you cannot just wipe the slate clean. You have to deal with what the facts are, or you have to actually try to make sure you can ascertain the facts -- as opposed to the hyperbole that is out there."

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said Obama has "put a lot of thought" into how to balance security and civil liberties.

"I think he is very much aware that this area has been something of a constitutional teeter-totter," said Wyden, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Yet Wyden, who spoke recently with CIA Director Leon Panetta about the difficulties of the job, said morale and other problems facing the CIA are real.

"He knew this job wasn't going to be a walk in the park, and he's certainly seen that in the last couple of weeks," the senator said, but he added that the director did not plan to walk away, a possibility raised in some news reports. "Leon Panetta is not a quitter," Wyden said.

So there it is. Obama has just invaded bureaucratic Russia.

If we survive the Obama administration without a civil war, it will be because insiders within the permanent government -- people who remember their oaths or just men and women who are frightened at what might happen to the prospect of their pensions -- used leaks and calculated PR weapons of selective destruction to bring down the players, one by one.

For this reason we should celebrate the Obama Administration's decision to attack the CIA.

Remember in Tolstoy's War and Peace when Marshal Kutuzov, the Imperial Russian commander, gets down on his knees and thanks God when he learns that Napoleon is advancing into the Rodina, the Motherland? He knew then that it would be the Little Emperor's undoing. As indeed it proved to be. So too did Adolf Hitler make the same mistake.

Well boys and girls, Eric Holder, acting as Field Marshal for his Emperor Barack the First has, in bureaucratic terms, just invaded Russia. The race is now on between the spooks they have outraged to a critical mass, and the progression of their bad behavior in dealing with the rest of us. Which will it be? Discredit and debasement at the hands of committed people who have spent their entire careers undermining hostile regimes with both truth and lies? Or, failing that, risking their own deaths by attacking people they should have known would resist?

Personally, I hope that we don't have to shoot anybody in righteous self-defense. But we should continue to make ready to do so.

I'm sure that Eric Holder discounts that possibility as far-fetched. But if he's as smart as I think he is, his sleep will be now disturbed by fears about the serial exposure of all the past sins of himself and his master. Because they WILL become known. For they have invaded the Rodina, and the spooks will now be closing in on his flanks and rear, gnawing, biting, irritating, until they politically bleed him and his boss to death from a hundred little PR savageries.

From now on, as the headlines mount, it will be the spooks who inhabit Eric Holder's nightmares -- and those of his Emperor. They might make it out of the outraged Russia they have invaded, but their reputations and their political fortunes won't. Of course, wounded animals are the most dangerous when they are at bay.

Get ready.

Say a little prayer for the spooks. But get ready nonetheless.

And you know what? I might even put on the 1812 Overture when I get back from the gun show today. ;-)

Institutionally, the CIA has a very long memory. The CIA also has friends /allies/debtors in places both high and low. The CIA has a long history of secrecy/compartmentalization, and selective leaking with purpose (often the distractions of a magician).

If an Executive wished to "shrink" the Agency and Spook Services in general, he could. This would be a mistake for the overall power of the Executive, and be like paying to have cataracts installed in your eyes. But, good luck on getting names named and The Whole Truth while actors still breathe.

If the Administration starts doing investigation/prosecution of people for "war crimes", etc., expect the Friends of the Agency Association including active agents, retired agents, former contractors, folks with special skills from high and low to become involved. They may become independent actors on their own missions. No one really wants this, do you?

Let me help with the decision making process: Stop this now. Apologize. Help with harmless insider pet projects.

There is only 14 months to the mid-term election, and 24 months after that until the Obama Administration goes Lame Duck. Enjoy the perks. Shop in Europe some more. Limit talking publicly (or to the Press) to one comment every 2 weeks on a harmless topic like puppy update or how well the girls are doing in school. More golf.

the white house telling holder to do whatever he feels like at the outset is typical. they can later say he acted independently, and made poor choices. it's always about sacrificing individuals for the party, with them. at least the bush administration, like most recent republican administrations, have the intellectual honesty to exercise power in a more unitary fashion, in tow with the concept of government as the singluar group with a monopoly on force.

on the other hand, if the CIA really is as powerful for the white house as pdxr13 implies, then they can be just as powerful to the white house. which completely undermines the constitution, nevermind that bit about a singular group with a monopoly on force.

so if there are in fact any posts in government for lifers, then knowledge of them and how to get them is an... intelligence issue. i don't call that a "service," i call that a secret or shadow government.

you know, the secret service went from investigating counterfeiters to a job where they surround the president at all times, armed.

Y'know, we just had a little discussion here, didn't we, on the topic of 'morality'? Does anyone but me recall that?

So now we have all these folk who yesterday asserted how moral they were today standing foursquare in defense of an agency that, in recent times, has exhibited behavior indistinguishable from the Gestapo, the SS, the Ton-Ton Macoute, and the NKVD.

And they did it all despite having taken an oath just like all the OathKeepers.

"Eric Holder, acting as Field Marshal for his Emperor Barack the First has, in bureaucratic terms, just invaded Russia. The race is now on between the spooks they have outraged to a critical mass, and the progression of their bad behavior in dealing with the rest of us."

Mike, usually I can follow your thought processes in an article. I even often agree. But this is kind of a blur. WRT the CIA: Does this mean yer fer it or agin' it? Because my attitude is 'a plague on both your houses.' None of these people are our friends. I hope the last spook strangles the last WH bureaucrat with his own entrails, before succumbing to his festering wounds.

It's not going to come to anything. They'll want to be able to use these tactics on "domestic terrorists" and they can't if they rule them illegal. At least not at first. Someone's going to find some way to make it all go away, and then we'll be heading for the interrogation chambers.

The proper reaction to torture is outrage. The proper reaction to officially-approved torture is Nuremberg for everyone approving of it. "Approval" includes any hesitation or doubt about whether it should be throughly investigated and prosecuted, or merely swept under the official rug.

Only enslaved people react submissively and with sympathy that tyrantsmight lose face, or be inconvenienced.

If Holder is Napoleon's Marshal, and the CIA is Russia, then the press is the Russian winter. If the press doesn't play ball, then no damage will occur.

Three possibilities arise: (1) the press will (as it did under Bush) publicize CIA leaks that are damaging to the Obama Administration; (2) the press will ignore damaging leaks; (3) the press will turn on the CIA and, in concern with the DoJ, destroy the leakers in order to protect Obama.

My gut instinct is that the press will not sign up for a campaign to damage/discredit Obama. They pledged their allegiance to him long ago. In fact, my guess is that the press will utilize the "criticism of Obama is racist" narrative they themselves have constructed against the CIA.

Nah, this is just the system's method of doing a little low-level purging. I seriously doubt Holder wants to take on the CIA full bore. From the cheap seats where I'm sitting, I can't really tell the difference between them.

When I think of Guantanamo and the Liberal outcry, I immediately think of the prisons all over the island of Cuba with their thousands of political prisoners, and the lack of any Liberal's interest in the atrocious conditions in them, as well as the brutality of the guards who serve in.

When it comes to torture, I think of the conditions in North Korea's notorious prison system, or the millions executed in Cambodia after living in camps under horrendous conditions.

And, then I think of our loyal CIA men, who are trying to protect my family, and my neighbor's family, and I say, "I know you have a job to do and it is not easy. My thanks, and my prayers are with you, because I well realize that our and your enemies may be as vicious within and those without."

Communists? Muslim fanatics? Terrorists? I've no sympathy for them. My feelings are for the safety of my countrymen. Pres. Obama, it might seem, is merely trying to take revenge out on prior administrations for the satisfaction of Bill Ayers, Bernadette Dorn and their ilk.

As an intellectual and moral exercise, I may not be able to support the use of torture. However, as a father, a husband, a countryman I would most probably not hestitate to do it if it secured the safety of my family and country.

Call me hypocrite if you must, but the most important principle here is one I will not violate. that is, "Don't fuck with my family or country".

There is a very easy way for me to avoid having to do that which I cannot intellectually or morally condone, but would viscerally perform under the proper circumstances. that is "Don't fuck with my family or country." How could I be more fair? I leave the decision up to them. I would certainly never initiate harm to others who planned none for me and mine.

If that isn't good enough, shame on dummies. The one thing we can't get around is if we weren't attacked and hadn't been under attack for the previous 40 years before we admitted it, none of this would be a topic of conversation. Ergo, some of the responsibility must lie with the captives. I'm sure they weren't taking high tea by coincidence at the capture point.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.